Fredelle Bruser Maynard on abortion

In her book, The Tree of Life, Fredelle Bruser Manyard tells of one incident from her time in New England in the mid-1970s. She speaks of a former student who had married and become an outstanding teacher (Mrs Crillis):

"Of her death I know only what I have read. On that last night, a local physican enlisted by the university's radical group telephoned two different hospitals. Would they admit a woman who had had a "miscarriage" and was haemorrhaging badly? The answer both times was No. It seems that hospitals... have to be very careful. So Mary Ellen was dispatched by ambulance to a hospital sixty miles away. State troopers questioned her as she lay bleeding to death. Who did it? and — how thorough the law is — Who was the father?

A very small funeral was held in a very large new church.... I thought the pallbearers... must all be boys from the high school. But someone told me, later, one was Mary Ellen's husband."

—from the chapter "The Death of Mary Ellen Cann"